Part 7

"Sometimes," smiled Betty, as she glanced out of the window toward the hardware store--"_sometimes_ a lawyer gets his."

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THE JOKE ON PRESTON

By Lewis Allen

"Has the prisoner secured counsel?"

"No, your honour," responded District Attorney Masters.

Judge Horton looked over the tops of his steel-rimmed spectacles, first at the unkempt prisoner, and then around the courtroom.

"The court will provide counsel for your defense. Have you any choice?" he asked the prisoner.

The prisoner had not. He didn't know one man from another in the courtroom. A faint suspicion of a smile showed on District Attorney Master's face. He winked slyly at several of his brother attorneys, and even smiled rather knowingly at the judge when he made the suggestion that the court appoint Mr. Preston attorney for the defense. A titter went around the courtroom at this, and young John Preston flushed to the roots of his yellow hair as he arose and went forward to consult with his client.

"Honest to God, are you a lawyer?" asked the prisoner, in a voice that carried. It took nearly two minutes to restore decorum.

In spite of his embarrassment young Preston thanked the court and asked for a day's postponement in order to acquaint himself with his client's case. This was granted, and after adjournment the District Attorney took young Preston aside, put his hand patronizingly on his shoulder, and said:

"Great Scott, Johnnie, give the poor devil a square deal! The only thing in the world for him is a plea of guilty and a request for leniency."

"Thank you, sir," said Preston rather stiffly, "but I at least want to know something of my client's case."

"Now, now, Johnnie, you must learn to take things in the proper spirit. Every young lawyer must have his first case, and he must expect a certain amount of good-natured raillery over it, and, believe me, it isn't every man fresh from law school who gets a murder case for the very first thing. Be sensible about it, boy. I'm advising you for your father's sake. We were partners, you know."

"Yes, I know," answered Preston.

"Oh, don't be stubborn, Johnnie! Why, dash it all, the prisoner has confessed!"

"A great many innocent men have confessed under the third degree," and young Preston bowed rather too formally and turned on his heel.

"He'll get the chair if you fight the case," snapped the District Attorney.

"He'll get the chair--or liberty, sir," was all young Preston replied, and he hurried over to the jail, where he was secluded in the cell with his client, the prisoner.

It wasn't much of a story the prisoner told. He said his name was Farral, that he was a plain hobo, and that with another hobo he had got into a fight with a freight brakeman who wouldn't let them jump the train. Both picked up lumps of coal to defend themselves, and in the mix-up the poor brakeman's skull was crushed. He managed to shoot and kill the other hobo, but he died before they got him to the hospital.

Young Preston said nothing, for five minutes. Farral became nervous. Finally he said:

"Say, kid, I ain't blamin' you any. You gotter have your first case some time, and so they wished you on me. The only thing to do is to plead guilty to self-defense----"

"Never do," said young Preston. "There isn't a juryman in the county who would agree to justifiable homicide."

"But I confessed, kid; I confessed. Whatcher goin' to do about it now?"

"Just what did you say? Give me the exact words."

"I says to the captain, 'Don't put me through no third degree. I killed him!'"

"What made you say that?"

"They'd put it on me anyway. I thought it would help me."

"What was the name of the man with you?"

"I don't know. I never saw him before."

"His name was Ichabod Jones," said Preston impressively, "and don't you ever forget it. Remember, you have known this man for a long while and that he went under the name of 'Black Ike.'"

Preston talked a half-hour longer with the man and drilled him over and over before he left him.

When the case came up the prosecution introduced witnesses sufficient to prove that the brakeman had been killed and then introduced the confession.

"We rest the case there, your honour," said District Attorney Masters, with somewhat of a flourish.

Young Preston put his client on the stand without delay and had him tell his story of the fight, which was to the effect that it was not he, but the other man, who killed the brakeman.

"What was the other man's name?" asked Preston.

"Ichabod Jones," replied the prisoner; "at least, that's what he told me."

"How did you always address him?"

"I always called him Ike."

"You may tell the court just what you said in this _alleged_ confession."

"I didn't make no confession. I said to the captain, 'Don't put me through no third degree. _Ike_ killed him.'"

And, for all that the prosecuting attorney could prove to the contrary, Ike did.

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THE IDYL

By Joseph F. Whelan

Let us have a day of idyl, you and I, Upon some mountain-top, with no one by Save birds and flowers and waving trees that sigh, And crooning winds whose lyrics never die.

The Poet handed it to the Girl, with rather a quizzical smile. They did not know each other. He had seen her walking along one of the park paths, and the loneliness of her face stopped him. She read the verse, then gazed at him a few seconds, half amused, half annoyed, then wholly joyous. He read compliance in her eyes.

"Rather rude, isn't it?" he asked. "But the desperation of loneliness is heavy on my soul."

They sauntered to the gates and boarded a street car, which whirled them, with twenty other people equally though unconsciously lonely, toward the mountain. She did not speak until they were zig-zagging along a bridle path up the mountainside. Then she unfolded the verse and said musingly:

"A day of idyl! A year ago I thought that every day would be an idyl." And the sweet mouth soured in the churn of memory.

"My dear lady," he said, "memories have no place in a day of idyl. Oh, let me teach you how to live, live, live, if only for an hour! Let's sing the song of nature which is happiness--dance the dance of winds which is joy--think the thought of butterflies which is nothing! Oh, there is happiness everywhere, everywhere--even for you and me!"

They reached a little hillock where a clump of bushes cast a tempting shadow.

"Let's sit down a while," she said, pouring water on a rocket.

For a few minutes they sat in silence. The idyl had not yet begun. From behind them came voices, and a woman's laugh startled the air and the Poet. Nearer came the voices, and the Girl gripped the grasses at her sides. The couple swung jauntily past without noticing them and settled down in the long grass at the foot of the hillock.

The Poet and the Girl were statues. Their faces were averted. From the long grass came the noise of kisses.

The sun slipped away. The air was hot and heavy and all around was the silence of premonition. A bird piped fretfully, and a peevish breeze shook the leaves. The amorous couple in the long grass rose.

"Say," said the man, looking at his watch, "if we're goin' to see that show we've got to hustle."

And they hurried away.

The Girl rose, walked a few yards, then stood gazing on the far horizon of departed time. Then she returned.

"That was my husband," she said.

The Poet sprang to his feet as though released by a spring. His face was gray as the sky.

"God help us both!" he cried. "The woman was my wife."

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WITHHELD

By Ella B. Argo

Every time he had tried to propose to her they had been interrupted.

There was the moonlight night on the beach when a sudden storm sent them scurrying to shelter. Once it was in her mother's drawing-room and callers were announced. He had almost reached the interrogation point while dancing when a colliding couple made them slip, and for weeks a broken ankle made her inaccessible. He might have put the momentous question in writing, but that did not appeal to his sense of fitness.

Lately she felt like Evangeline, since business always took him out of New York the day before she arrived, and twice illness called her home when he was to have met her at some resort. The Evangeline feeling was strong to-night, because he had inexplicably failed to keep his Miami appointment to accompany her mother and herself home, and at the last moment they had decided to come by sea.

Then suddenly off Norfolk she came face to face with him on the deck. She was excitedly responsive to his white-faced, trembling-voiced rapture at seeing her, and they both forgot to make explanations.

It was late, but they paced the deck for an hour, and every moment of that hour she expected him to speak, although one passenger walked disconcertingly near them.

His love had taken on a new humility, for where once he had been masterful, impetuous, he now seemed afraid and looked at her adoringly but despairingly, as though at some inaccessible heaven. She fought between modesty and a desire to encourage him. The hours flew, and he had not even sought a secluded corner. She sent away the maid who came with her mother's summons and lingered another moment for the words she felt were trembling on the lips beneath the love-agonized eyes. He accepted her proud good-night without remonstrance, although he clung to her hand as though he would never let it go.

"This must be good-bye," he said. "The ship will dock before you are up, and I have to make a dash for the train."

No word of future meeting.

Almost all the passengers had landed and her mother and the maid were far ahead in the crowd when she remembered a silver cup she had left in the stateroom. Her way back was barred first by a laughing and weeping reunited Cuban family, and then by a group of men excitedly discussing the quick capture of a murderer who had claimed self-defense in a political quarrel but had run. It seemed the man was prominent, and it sounded interesting, but her mother would worry if she stopped.

The emotional Cuban family was again in her way. The cup was knocked from her hand, and it rolled down the deck. She picked it up and turned to see him framed in a door opened by the restless passenger of the night before.

Then her sun went down in eternal blackness. He was handcuffed.

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UP AND DOWN

By Bertha Lowry Gwynne

Rhyolite Rose kept always her curiously unfeminine sense of humour. Standing in the doorway of the Bodega where nightly she accompanied herself on a battered piano, and sang indecorous songs with the voice of a seraph, she listened, vastly diverted, to the crap dealer's flights of fancy.

"Get your money down, boys; six, eight, field or come--play a favourite. Here comes the lucky man! He throwed nine, Long Liz, the ham and egg gal."

Rhyolite was booming, and Rhyolite was fortune-mad. It was Saturday night. Outside on Golden Street crowds surged up and down. There were miners, promoters, engineers, cooks, crooks, tin horns and wildcatters; good women, bad women, and boarding-house keepers. Adventurers all; each confident that to-morrow would bring him fortune.

The Bodega overflowed with a good-humoured crowd that stood four deep at the bar. Around the crap table was a restless throng, drawn by the dealer's recitative, a curious chant detailing the fortunes of Big Dick from Boston, Little Joe, Miss Phoebe, and many more of the fanciful folk that indicate the fall of the dice.

Mining booms a-plenty Rose had seen. For five years she had followed them since she had first appeared in the Klondike a young girl with a lovely face, a gentle voice, and a consuming passion for Scotch whiskey. Each year since then had taken some of the innocence from her face, and set deeper shadows in her eyes; each year found her growing sadder till evening came, and then very gay, indeed; for by night Rose's sorrow, whatever it was, had been drowned in a square bottle.

The pasty-faced crap dealer droned on: "Now and then I earn a small one," he was saying. "Miss Ada, yore maw wants you----"

He faltered, and came to a pause. A shot had sounded on the street outside, and almost instantly the saloon was emptied.

Following the crowd, and still smiling, went Rhyolite Rose. She gathered from snatches of agitated conversation that "Sidewinder," the camp's bad man, in shooting at an unbearable acquaintance, had killed a stranger.

Not dead, but desperately wounded, the man lay on the boardwalk. Rose pushed her way to his side. As she looked down upon him her face blanched, the red of her cheeks standing out in odd relief.

"He's a friend of mine," she said to the men around her. "Take him to my cabin, and send for the doctor."

Rose darted into the saloon, and snatching a decanter of whiskey, saturated her handkerchief with it. As she ran she rubbed the rouge from her face. She passed the little procession, and reaching her cabin made preparations for the man's coming. That done, she dug into a trunk, taking from it a much-crumpled dress. Hastily she put it on.

The unconscious man was laid on the bed, and in a few minutes the doctor came. He gazed at Rose astounded. She was garbed in the habit of a novitiate of a nursing sisterhood.

"What the----" he began. She interrupted him, and underneath her flippancy the man saw real misery.

"It's _Sister_ Rose now," the woman said. "I shed my sins with my scenery. Get me?"

The doctor nodded. Carefully he tended the wounded man.

"There is nothing we can do," he said at length. "He is dying."

"Suits me, Doc," said Rose.

He left, and the woman sat quietly by the bed, her face set, her body tense, waiting. In a little while the man opened his eyes, and she saw that he knew her. She leaned over and lifted him into her arms. His head rested on her thin bosom.

"Little Sister, is it true?" he said in a whisper. "I dream so much. Every night and every night I dream that I have found you. I have hunted for you so long, Little Sister; everywhere; up and down the whole world." His voice died out.

When he spoke again it was with an effort. "The other woman ... she didn't count. When you left I went mad." He raised himself with a burst of strength, his face distorted. "It was the uncertainty, the uncertainty! You were so little," he muttered. "I have looked for you," he repeated, drearily, "everywhere up and down the whole world."

"Never mind." Rose spoke serenely. Subtly, indefinably she had become again a gentlewoman. "Oh, my dearest, _yes_, I forgive you. God has watched over _me_, honey. There is a typhoid epidemic here. The sisters sent me."

The man gave a long sigh. "My little girl, unhurt."

She laid him down, and he drowsed awhile. Just before dawn he stirred.

"Sing, Little Sister," he whispered.

"I am far frae my hame I am weary aften whiles----"

Rose sang a song of her childhood. Her voice had withstood the ravages of cigarette smoke, whiskey, and overstrain. It rose clear and true,

"Like a bairn to its mither, A wee----"

"Little Sister!" She bent to hear him.

"I have looked for you everywhere; up and down----" he was dead.

Tearless, Rose sat by the bed a long time. She came to herself with a sudden start.

In the dead man's hands she placed a crucifix; and, kneeling, with little lapses of memory, she recited the prayer for the dead.

Then, as if moved by some force without herself, with eyes staring, she rose from her knees and hurried to the kitchen. She took down from a shelf a bottle of Scotch whiskey. With fingers that trembled she poured herself out a long drink.

"Now and then I earn a small one," said Rhyolite Rose.

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THE ANSWER

By Harry Stillwell Edwards

The dim lights of the old pawnbroker's shop flickered violently as the street door opened, letting in a gust of icy wind. The man who came with the wind closed the door with difficulty, approached the low desk, took off his thin coat, shook the sleet from it and laid it on the counter.

"As much as ye can," he said crisply. "'Tis me last!"

The broker measured the garment with a careless glance and tossed fifty cents on the counter.

"Come wanst more, me friend! 'Tis not enough for the illegant coat."

Pathos did not appeal often to the old dealer, but this time it did. A vibration in the voice exactly fitted the mystery of something buried deep in the subconsciousness. He questioned the other with a swift glance, hesitated, and by the coin laid another like it. The man nodded.

"'Tis little enough, but 'twill do."

He took a pencil from the desk and with much effort wrote a few lines on a bit of wrapping paper. Straightening, he fixed a steady gaze on the old face turned, not unkindly, to his.

"We have known aiche ither more'n a bit. Ye know I'm not th' drunkard nor th' loafer. I know ye aire a har-r-d man--ye have to be in this trade, har-r-d but square. I am off for good and all; 'tis for the sake of the gyrul and the little man. She'll not go home till I lave her. Sind th' money and the line to the place it spells; 'twill pay her way home--they'll take her, without me; they have said it. Will ye do it?"

The old man looked away from him and was silent.

"Yes!" he said, at length.

They waited and then shook hands, for no reason, after the fashion of men.

"What have you been doing of late?" a voice broke in that was clear-cut, sharp, and almost offensively authoritative. It came from a third man standing near, unnoticed. The coatless stranger regarded him steadily, his face hardening. He saw a short, rotund figure, almost swallowed up in a fur coat now thrown open, a heavy chain across the prominent paunch, an enormous diamond above, a prominent curved nose and sweeping black moustache. An elbow on the counter supported a jewelled hand that poised a fat black cigar with an ash half an inch long.

The eyes of the two men met, Celt and Hebrew. A moment of strained silence and something passed. What? Eternity's messages travel many channels. The Irishman's resentment faded; his lips framed a slow, sardonic grin.

"Me? Sure, I been searchin' for the Christ! Do ye mind that ye saw Him along the way ye came?"

"No," said the other simply. "He does not live in New York! You spoke of going for good. Where--without a coat--by the bridge route?"

"An' is't your business?" The Irish blood flared.

"Perhaps," replied the Hebrew, coolly flicking the ash. And then:

"Wouldn't you rather put it off and take a job?"

The red faded from the face in front of him, the pale lips parted in silence, and one hand caught the counter.

"If you would, come to my place, The Star Pool and Billiard Palace, four blocks above the Bridge, and I'll start you at twelve and a half a week. One of my men skipped with forty dollars' worth of billiard balls yesterday--I am looking for them now. You can have his job. A man who will pawn his coat a night like this for his wife and baby and don't get drunk won't steal billiard balls. It's a business proposition."

He drew from his pocket a fat roll of bills and peeled off a five.

"Take this on account," he concluded, studiously avoiding the other's gaze. "It will loosen up things at home until to-morrow. Here, take your coat along."

From the door the Irishman rushed back, seized the garment, extended his hand, but suddenly withdrew it.

"Not now, sor," he stammered brokenly. "Sure, I can't say it! I'll say it ivery day I work for ye."

"Good! You're all right! Now hustle, my boy!"

* * * * *

The woman in the room sat prone on the floor, her thin shawl sheltering herself and wailing infant. Not an article of furniture remained, not even her little charcoal burner--it had been the last to go. The firm, quick footsteps in the hallway carried a message that brought her face up and drew her eager gaze to the door. The man who stepped within carried an armful of packages. With her eyes riveted on these, her own arms tightened around the emaciated form she held.

"Maery!" said the newcomer gently. "Ye have been telling me I'd be finding the Christ Child if I tried hard--I do remember ye said He always came to the pooer an' sick first; to the honest an' thrue! Ye knew, Maery, me girl! Sure, it's in the holy name of ye--the faith. Well, I found Him to-night!"

He stood silent, his lips twitching and his face drawn against an emotion that shamed him.

A wordless cry came from the woman. She struggled to her knees and leaned toward him, her eyes shining with the light that ever is on land and sea where angels pass.

"Mike! Where?"

The packages slipped from Mike's arms to the floor, and his lifted face blanched with the wonder of some far-away scene, and a revelation undreamed of in his hard, narrow life. And then with a twinkle in his Irish eyes:

"In the heart of a Jew," he whispered.

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PATCHES

By Francis E. Norris

Van Gilder, although worth an easy million in his own name, was proud to be able to write M. D. after it. He had a practice, to be sure, but it was mostly upon poor dumb beasts made sick or otherwise to suit his passing purpose. This engrossed most of his time and attention. "It was so fascinating." This pastime was called research, and, being a man of means, he could devote himself at will to it.

And so it happened that one day when on his way to the laboratories he chanced to see the very specimen he "needed" for the day's investigation. It was indeed a poor, wretched beast by the side of a still more wretched human who was on the corner begging. This was luck. Van Gilder usually was lucky.

He stopped his electric alongside the curb and approached the pair.

"Mister, would y' be kind enough----"

"Yes, surely, I can help you. Here's ten dollars for your dog."

"Ten dollars? For Patches? Oh, no."

"Well, then, make it twenty-five. You need the money, and the dog will be out of your way."

"Patches? Sell him for twenty-five? To get him out of the way?" The wretched, shrivelled soul seemed dazed. "Why, sir, not for a thousand could you have that dog."